Richard Butler (Aryan Nations)

Richard Butler (23 February 1918-8 September 2004) was an American far-right leader and the founder of the Aryan Nations.

Biography
Richard Butler was born in Denver, Colorado in 1918, and he was raised in Los Angeles, California. Butler was a member of the Silver Legion of America until its suppression in 1941, and he served in the US Air Force stateside during World War II. After the war, he became an engineer, and he moved with his family to Palmdale, Idaho in the early 1970s, founding the Aryan Nations white supremacist church and hate group. It operated from Hayden Lake, near Coeur d'Alene, and he was investigated several times in the 1980s for plotting to overthrow the US government. In 2000, he was forced to pay $6.3 million to a Native American couple which was harassed by his group, and he died of congestive heart failure four years later.